Food safety regulations increasingly pressure growers to remove hedgerows, ponds and other natural habitats from farms to keep out pathogen-carrying wildlife and livestock. Yet, this could come at the cost of biodiversity. New research encourages the presence of dung beetles and soil bacteria at farms as they naturally suppress E. coli and other harmful pathogens before spreading to humans.

In favorable conditions, many bacteria propel themselves to food sources and other sites of interest using whip-like molecular propellers known as flagella. However, according to new research, members of the bacterial class Gammaproteobacteria eject their flagella when nutrients are scarce.